Category Archives: nutrition

How Sugar Reduces Brainpower

Posted on May 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Eating too much sugar can eat away at your brainpower, according to US scientists who published a study Tuesday showing how a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup sapped lab rats’ memories.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) fed two groups of rats a solution containing high-fructose corn syrup — a common ingredient in processed foods — as drinking water for six weeks.

One group of rats was supplemented with brain-boosting omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), while the other group was not.

Before the sugar drinks began, the rats were enrolled in a five-day training session in a complicated maze. After six weeks on the sweet solution, the rats were then placed back in the maze to see how they fared.

“The DHA-deprived animals were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity,” said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“Their brain cells had trouble signaling each other, disrupting the rats’ ability to think clearly and recall the route they’d learned six weeks earlier.”

A closer look at the rat brains revealed that those who were not fed DHA supplements had also developed signs of resistance to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar and regulates brain function.

“Because insulin can penetrate the blood-brain barrier, the hormone may signal neurons to trigger reactions that disrupt learning and cause memory loss,” Gomez-Pinilla said.

In other words, eating too much fructose could interfere with insulin’s ability to regulate how cells use and store sugar, which is necessary for processing thoughts and emotions.

“Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain, where insulin appears to disturb memory and learning,” Gomez-Pinilla said.

“Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new.”

High-fructose corn syrup is commonly found in soda, condiments, applesauce, baby food and other processed snacks.

The average American consumes more than 40 pounds (18 kilograms) of high-fructose corn syrup per year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

While the study did not say what the equivalent might be for a human to consume as much high-fructose corn syrup as the rats did, researchers said it provides some evidence that metabolic syndrome can affect the mind as well as the body.

“Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think,” said Gomez-Pinilla.

“Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage.”

The study appeared in the Journal of Physiology.

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Posted in health, nutrition

Foods that look like body parts

Posted on May 15, 2012 by | 1 Comment

I read this article a few days ago and yesterday realised that I could remember almost all the foods that were listed and what body parts the nutrients are particularly good for.  That was reason enough for me to re-post the article..

It’s a great way to teach kids a few basic nutritional ideas about which foods are packed with goodness for their growing bodies.

 

 

 

 

Slice a carrot in half crosswise and it’s easy to see that the veggie resembles  an eye—look closely and you’ll even notice a pattern of radiating lines that  mimic the pupil and iris. And the old wives’ tale is true: Munching on carrots  will actually promote healthy eyes. “Carrots are filled with vitamins and  antioxidants, like beta-carotene, that decrease the chance of macular  degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in older people,” says Sasson  Moulavi, MD, medical director of Smart for Life Weight Management Centers in  Boca Raton, Florida.


 

 

 

Slice open a tomato and you’ll notice the red veggie has multiple chambers that  resemble the structure of a heart. “Studies have found that because of the  lycopene in tomatoes, there is a reduced risk for heart disease in men and women  who eat them,” says Somer. And, she adds, if you mix them with a little fat,  like olive oil or avocado, it will boost your body’s lycopene absorption nearly  tenfold.

Photos by iStockphoto

Read more: Food Nutrition Facts – Healthy Living Tips at WomansDay.com – Woman’s Day

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Posted in antioxidants, health, nutrition, nuts, plant foods, real food, wellness

Does cholesterol cause heart disease?

Posted on May 11, 2012 by | Leave a comment

The idea that high cholesterol causes heart disease is based on the premise that cholesterol is found in the plaque of people with coronary artery disease. But does that automatically mean that cholesterol itself is the root cause, and must be kept at a minimum to prevent plaque formation?

The answer is “no.”

Missing from this hypothesis is the holistic understanding of how cholesterol operates inside your body, and why arterial plaques form in the first place.

Cholesterol is actually a critical part of your body’s foundational building materials and is absolutely essential for optimal health.

In an interview with Dr. Mercola, Dr. Robert Rowen points out that it is so important that your body produces it both in your liver and in your brain. Cholesterol is also the raw material for all of your steroid hormones and vitamin D. There’s no doubt that you need it.

“Think about this for a second. Your neurons are making it for a reason,” Dr. Rowen says. “Just logically speaking, if you take a statin drug, which poisons the enzyme HMG-CoA reductase… Hello? Your brain is not going to make the cholesterol that it needs, so you can expect – you can predict –that there’s going to be a problems, years down the line, and we’re seeing it now with statin drugs affecting the brain.”

So what’s the connection between cholesterol and heart disease?

If your body needs so much of it, what causes it to clog your arteries? The devil is in the details, as they say, and this is definitely true when it comes to cholesterol, because as Dr. Rowen explains, the cholesterol found in arterial plaque is not just any cholesterol, but oxidized, damaged cholesterol.

“There is an excellent research on animals where they fed animals plenty of cholesterol in their diet and they did just fine. But when they gave them even small amounts of tainted cholesterol, meaning oxidized cholesterol, within weeks it showed up in fatty streaks in their arteries,” Dr. Rowen says.

“We know why now. There are receptors in the endothelial cells that are the lining of your arteries. There are receptors there for oxidized cholesterol. It picks it up, and it goes into the endothelial cells. The problem is that oxidized cholesterol does not look native to your macrophages, your immune system. It actually looks like bacteria. The macrophages move in to try and clean up what it thinks is bacteria, which is nothing more than oxidized cholesterol, and it creates a whole bunch of inflammation inside your arterial wall. The real culprit is oxidized cholesterol.”

Where Does Oxidized Cholesterol Come From?

Oxidized cholesterol is introduced into your system every time you eat something cooked in vegetable oil. As soon as the oil is heated and mixes with oxygen, it goes rancid. Rancid oil is oxidized oil, and should not be consumed. This is why I constantly recommend avoiding all vegetable cooking oils, such as canola-, corn-, or soy oil, and replacing them with organic coconut oil, which remains stable and does not oxidize at higher temperatures.

“I am a proponent of eating far more uncooked food and certainly, zero foods cooked in oil,” Dr. Rowen says. “I strongly urge [my patients] to eat more raw uncooked foods, because heat is damaging the oils, which in turn is going to damage the cholesterol and lead to vascular disease problem.”

Another reason for avoiding vegetable cooking oils is that the majority of them (at least in the US) are made from genetically engineered crops; plus they’re heavily processed on top of that. So not only do you have the issue of the polyunsaturated fats being oxidized, you also have these other toxic variables, such as glyphosate and Bt toxin found in genetically engineered corn and soy. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, which is used in very large amounts on all of these crops. So there are a number of reasons for avoiding vegetable oils, but the fact that they’re oxidized is clearly a high-priority one.

Dr. Robert Rowen is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the prestigious Johns Hopkins University. He also attended the University of California in San Francisco. He was originally board certified in both family practice and emergency medicine, as well as the American Board of Clinical Metal Toxicology. (After being recertified, he later allowed those certifications to lapse, as he doesn’t believe they’re pertinent to his current work.)

Dr. Rowen has been involved in complementary or integrative medicine since 1983, and was instrumental in creating the first statutory protection for natural medicine in the United States in the state of Alaska, in 1990.  He’s presently the editor-in-chief of Second Opinion, which is a printed national newsletter, and he’s also still seeing patients in Santa Rosa, California.

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Growing vegetables in the shade

Posted on May 4, 2012 by | 3 Comments

I am way behind the power curve when it comes to gardening – both in terms of planting seeds this spring and in terms of my life experience of growing food, but that makes me even more determined to get on with it!

I have already put a few strawberry transplants in a little window box on my deck and can do no more than wait for the rain and sun to do their thing and wait for a harvest of juicy berries.. fingers crossed we will have a tasty crop for my kids to devour, they do love their strawberries.

Our garden doesn’t get too much sun thanks to our position amongst some very tall trees.  A beautiful canopy is sprouting to life, which is ideal for a shade-lover like myself, but doesn’t help much when it comes to the vegetable patch.

So I have been looking for advice online and thought I would share some of the wisdom I found online about growing vegetables in the shade.

Whilst it seems as though few things will grow very well in complete shade, if you have at least a few hours of sunshine a day, then you should be able to produce a decent harvest.

Mother Earth News provided me with a great rule of thumb; think in terms of leaves and roots.  In other words, crops which we grow for their leaves (kale, lettuce, spinach) and those we grow for their roots (beets, carrots, turnips) will apparently do fairly well in partially shady conditions.  So those crops that we grow for their fruits — such as  eggplants, peppers and tomatoes — really do need at least six hours of full  sun per day.

Six hours is definitely more sun that we will get in our back yard, so I have a plan to exchange seeds and produce with family members who have more direct sunshine.  We will produce the leafy greens and hopefully they will grow some tomatoes!  It remains to be seen whether my strawberries will be a success.

This link will take you to a fairly comprehensive list of shade tolerant vegetables for reference. http://www.motherearthnews.com/shade-tolerant-vegetables-zm0z11zsto.aspx#ixzz1tvA3p53R

Another article I found on Mother Earth News gives more detail about the different kinds of shade you might experience in your garden and what steps you can take to increase the light (for example using reflective mulch or painting a nearby wall white).

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/vegetables-to-grow-in-shade-zm0z11zsto.aspx

We plan to use raise beds, which is recommended by many gardeners as it provides space to use additional high quality potting soil, as well as helping to avoid some of those nearby tree roots which will steal water away from your crops.  You can even line the bottom of the beds with carpet or something similar, to further prevent the roots from invading.

My organic seeds should be arriving in the mail any day now and I will be germinating them in a seed tray before planting them out.  I will endeavour to post pictures of my garden as it comes to fruition and welcome your comments about your own gardening efforts!  Growing your own organic vegetables and fruit is a fantastic way to avoid genetically modified food and pesticides from your diet!

 

 

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Posted in nutrition, organic farming, real food, vegan

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Healthy eating ideas for kids

Posted on April 10, 2012 by | Leave a comment

When you have a child, you have the unique opportunity to mold a developing person. One of your greatest gifts to them can be a disease resistant body created from excellent food choices beginning at youth. Ear infections, strep throats, allergies, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADD or ADHD), and even autoimmune diseases can be prevented by sound nutritional practices early in life. Common childhood illnesses are not only avoidable, but they’re more effectively managed by incorporating nutritional excellence into one’s diet. This is far superior to the dependence on drugs to which we are accustomed. No parent would disagree that our children deserve only the best. – Joel Fuhrman, author of “Disease-Proof Your Child”

It seems as if it is a constant battle when your kids are young to try and feed them as healthily as possible.. I knew almost nothing about nutrition before having children, except the basics of what was apparently ‘good’ for you or not and how to choose the chocolate bar with the lowest number of calories.  So even before I had given birth to my first child, I started to read about nutrition.  It started with ‘what to eat when you’re pregnant..’ followed by ‘what to eat (and what to avoid) when you’re breastfeeding..’ and evolved from there!

When my son was ready for his first solid food we skipped the over-processed ‘baby cereal’ options and went straight for some simple pureed fruits like pear and apple, quickly followed by ice-cube sized portions of butternut squash or pumpkin.  Since he readily accepted food from a spoon (before I had heard of baby-led weaning) I quickly discovered that it was easy enough to whip up all kinds of vegetable soups for the family and not have to make something different for my little one.. and this had the added bonus of encouraging more healthy habits for mum & dad too!

As my baby grew into a toddler, it became harder to get away with eating a sneaky chocolate cookie in the kitchen and we gave in to some of the treats kids come to love, like Cadbury Buttons, yum!  I trialed all kids of convenience snacks, but in the end was reluctant to spend silly money on an almost empty bag of organic dust, which is what most of the so-called healthy snacks seemed to be.  We did like those pouches of squished fruit though and I had intended to invent this before some other clever mama did!

We have always tried to get our chillies (kids) to eat the same thing we were having for dinner (rather than give in to the ‘kids menu’ trap) and to try and make it something healthy, at least avoiding  processed foods as much as possible.  I would much rather serve up a cheese-covered, high calorie lasagne made from scratch at home than throw a shop-bought “low calorie” alternative in the microwave!

My kids love broccoli.  This is mostly thanks to their Auntie’s recommendation to dip those little trees in “spicy dressing” a.k.a. Cindy’s Balsamic.  The spicy dressing also goes brilliantly with steamed cauliflower, which is otherwise unlikely to be high up on anyone’s favourite foods list unless it is covered with a ludicrous amount of cheese.

What is healthy for an adult is not necessarily what is healthy for a child.. or vice versa.  Whilst I might choose to buy a low fat version, we buy a large tub of whole milk yoghurt every week for our two kiddies, they have it with frozen blueberries, sliced bananas or in a shake with a mixture of frozen berries and some OJ.. and often as a delicious homemade popsicle!  Kids use up a lot of calories.. even when they aren’t running wild and bouncing off the walls, they are growing like weeds.

Before we moved from England, I had subscribed to a great little service called graze.com.  Twice a week they sent me a lovely little recycled cardboard package in the post filled with tasty, healthy treats like nuts, seeds and raisins in all manner of fun flavours including the occasional chocolate covered varieties.  My eldest loved them and it got us into eating more nuts and dried fruit in general.  My little girl is a big fan, we buy big bags of all kinds of nuts and raisins, which can easily be grabbed by the handful at home or mixed together in a tub and taken out for snacks on the go.

Although my little ones have eaten their fair share of hot dogs, fries, ice cream and chocolate (we still have Easter bunnies to finish at home!) it always brings me joy to see them tuck into something healthy.  I’ve known Dylan devour salads and Josie has already eaten more fruit in her short life than most adults.. not to mention the amount of beans she can eat in one sitting!  It’s never too late (or too early) to get your kids eating healthy food.. and your own habits will no doubt be changed for the better!

 

 

 

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Posted in health, nutrition, nuts, plant foods, real food, wellness

Which is Healthier? Microwave- or Oven-cooked Food?

Posted on April 6, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I had to share this little gem of a video, which nicely explains whether (or rather when) microwave cooked food is bad for you. I have been wondering about this for years.. convinced that the microwave was killing off the nutrients in my food at best.. and at worst could be causing who knows what dis-ease in our bodies!

I have read a lot of comments that suggest we should really be doing without these convenient little energy-saving machines, suggesting that we’re better off with an old fashioned oven.. or is that just what us foodies like to believe, because you can’t roast chicken and potatoes in a microwave?!

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Posted in animal foods, cancer, nutrition, toxic chemicals

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Are you eating enough fat?!

Posted on February 18, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Thankfully the low-fat diets are under wraps and more people are realising that you need healthy fats in your diet but there are still a lot of people out there who have not heard that:

Eating fat will not make you fat as quickly as eating carbs will.

When you cut out carbohydrates, you need to replace those calories with healthy fats. Both are sources of energy, but healthy fats are far better than carbs. Not just any kind of fat will do. The Atkins Diet is a popular example of a low-carb, high-fat diet that helped many shed unwanted pounds. Unfortunately, Dr. Atkins paid very little attention to the QUALITY of the fats he recommended, so while his plan worked in the short-term, many people who tried it ended up experiencing long-term issues.

You may not know it, but frequent hunger may have more to do with WHAT you are eating than how much. Not only is it an indication that you’re choosing the wrong types of food, but it’s also a sign that you’re probably consuming them in unbalanced ratios for your personal biochemistry.

Fat is far more satiating than carbohydrate, so if you have cut back on carbs and feel ravenous, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you just can’t do without bread and pasta. This is only a sign that you need to replace them with sufficient amounts of fat. So go ahead and add some healthy fats from the list below:

  • Olives and Olive oil
  • Coconuts and coconut oil
  • Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk
  • Raw nuts, such as, almonds or pecans
  • Organic pastured egg yolks
  • Avocados
  • Grass-fed meats
  • Unheated organic nut oils

Another nutritious fat you should be mindful of is animal-based omega-3. Deficiency in this essential fat can contribute to serious health problems, both mental and physical, and may be a significant underlying factor of nearly 100,000 premature deaths per year. Emerging evidence suggests that your diet should be at least half healthy fat, and possibly as high as 70%.

It will probably be debated by nutritionists and doctors for centuries to come whether our bodies actually need animal products or not, but we do need saturated fats from a variety of sources that may include meat, dairy, certain oils, and tropical plants like coconut for optimal functioning, and neglecting this important food group in favor of sugar, grains and other starchy carbs, will guarantee to negatively affect your health and weight.

Your body has a limited capacity to store excess carbohydrates. This is one of the reasons why elevated blood sugar follows their overconsumption. One of the ways your body avoids dangerously elevated blood sugar is through converting those excess carbohydrates into excess body fat primarily in your belly. Any carbohydrates not immediately used by your body are stored in the form of glycogen (a long string of glucose molecules linked together). Your body has two storage sites for glycogen: your liver and your muscles. Once the glycogen levels are filled in both your liver and muscles, excess carbohydrates are converted into fat and stored in your adipose, that is, fatty, tissue.

So, although carbohydrates are “fat-free,” this is misleading because excess carbohydrates end up as excess fat. Puffed rice, is apparently capable of making your blood sweeter than white sugar, due to the fact that it is higher on the glycemic index – all the more reason why refined grains are “hidden sugar,” and sugar is in many ways “hidden fat.”

But living without breakfast cereal isn’t the worst of it! Any meal or snack high in carbohydrates will also generate a rapid rise in blood glucose. To adjust for this rapid rise, your pancreas secretes insulin into your bloodstream, which then lowers your levels of blood glucose. The problem is that insulin is essentially a storage hormone, evolved to put aside excess carbohydrate calories in the form of fat in case of future famine. So the insulin that’s stimulated by excess carbohydrates aggressively promotes the accumulation of body fat!

In other words, when you eat too much sugar, pasta, bread, and any other grain products, you’re essentially sending a hormonal message, via insulin, to your body that says “store more fat.” This is actually a highly beneficial response in certain scenarios such as when calories are very scarce. This provides a major survival advantage — but for nearly everyone reading this, having insufficient calories is not an issue, so this protective mechanism actually sabotages your health.

Unless living longer is not your primary objective and you are presently seeking to optimize fertility or athletic performance, then cutting back on carbs is pretty essential for your health.

That said, since giving up non-vegetable carbs is one of my biggest challenges in life …  how much can we realistically eat and still be healthy?

According to Paul Jaminet, PhD. in his book Perfect Health Diet, a 20 percent carb diet is healthy for nearly everyone (that’s 20% of calories). As mentioned above, 50-70 percent of your diet should be healthy fat (see above for the best sources).

Hopefully my recent penchant for dark chocolate coated almonds fits neatly into this equation, although I should probably try to limit my Dunkin Donuts’ purchases to coffee (and how many more decades will it be before they offer raw milk in that?!).

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Meditating whilst breastfeeding

Posted on February 5, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I wish I had realised a long time ago, what a great opportunity breastfeeding can be for some much-needed meditation time.  We all seem to struggle to find some ‘me time’ in our lives, for a thousand different reasons, but becoming a new parent, and especially a new mother nursing a baby, it can seem like there is rarely a minute to spare in the day for personal reflection.  Like anything, the whole concept of me-time, or lack of it, has largely to do with one’s perspective and attitude.  We may complain that we never have a moment to ourselves and then spend those ten precious minutes in the shower thinking about our day’s to-do list, or stresses at work.. instead we could be living in the moment and appreciating a few relaxing minutes under the hot water.  Think only positive thoughts in the shower and your day will be so much better for it!

As a new mother of course, there is a huge demand for your time and attention.  Parenthood is full of joyous times, but in those first few weeks and months it sure can test your patience and lack of experience.  The learning curve is steep.  Breastfeeding brings its own set of challenges.  Many women are lacking the model of their mothers and grandmothers, with trends in recent generations having moved away from breastfeeding towards bottle feeding for a number of dubious cultural and medical reasons.  But thankfully it seems that a come back is on the cards and more and more mothers are choosing to breastfeed their babies.

The time spent nursing a newborn is unfathomable at first.  That baby might feed every two hours for as long as an hour at a time!  Almost constantly in other words and it is testing to say the least.  The best advice I received as a new mother was to get comfortable.  Cultivate a comfy corner, a nursing chair ideally, with all kinds of essentials to hand.. magazines, books, the phone, snacks and drinks.. anything you might feasibly need throughout the course of the day!

That simple setup can save you some of the stress of being confined to your chair.  Nursing can become a joy if you have a hot cup of tea and a good book within arms reach.  I have spent thousands of hours nursing my two children and have gotten better at it.. but I often lay in bed with my feeding baby feeling rather sorry for myself.. wishing I could get away and do something ‘constructive’.  When my babies were ‘down for the night’, that was just the beginning of the evening… since we had gone against the advice of health visitors and well-meaning friends who suggested we should let them cry it out.  So every time my child woke up and called for me (and the youngest still does) I would trot off to nurse the little munchkin back to sleep.  Sometimes that would take a few minutes, but often it could be hours before they were asleep deeply enough to let me slip away.

I have missed the end of countless movies and a few parties.  By the time the child was done with me, I was usually too warm and cosy to bother getting up again, happy to finally turn over and go to sleep!  In fact I have gone to bed so early for the past four years that I have probably had more sleep than before, rather than less.. which almost makes up for the adjustment to waking up every few hours to reattach myself to a stirring infant!

I have only recently been interested in meditation and I am not at all knowledgeable about the subject or practice.  But I have read enough about personal development in all areas of life, that I soon realised that a few minutes a day of quiet reflection can do us all the world of good.  We all meditate from time to time, whether we give it that name or not.

Have you ever missed a turning on a familiar drive home?  It is easy to daydream on the highway or whilst staring out the window of a train.. there are plenty of opportunities to meditate in daily life.  Breastfeeding is ideal.  It took me several years to realise this.  I also never seemed to have a good book handy, so I spent many hours frustrated at the ‘wasted’ time I was attached to my babies when I should have been washing dishes or folding laundry.  Of course I knew in my heart that there is nothing on earth more worthwhile than nurturing a tiny human being, but sometimes you lose sight of the big picture amidst the exhausted blur of early motherhood.

Whether you are already well versed in the practice of meditation or just thinking about giving it a try, you might be struggling to find time in your day as a new mother.  But you will quickly see how easily you can fit in some practice with baby attached!

Not only will this save time, but it also has another benefit, namely creating positive energy.  If you think about it, meditation is all about relaxing the mind and body. But it also brings more energy into your being, widens your awareness, and focuses your attention. This means that all of the energy you are creating while you are breastfeeding is going to your baby.

Of course, not every feeding session will lend itself perfectly to this peaceful activity.  If you continue to breastfeed your child beyond a year or more, you might encounter the antics of a distracted and active toddler. My daughter is a master at practising all manner of yoga poses whilst nursing, but in those quieter evening feeds, you can start by taking a couple deep breaths and relaxing your body.  Focus on your baby’s beautiful face and think positive, uplifting thoughts of your child’s long, happy, and healthy life.  With practice it might even work in the middle of a hectic day and both mother and child will likely be better for the experience.

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Posted in attachment parenting, health, nutrition

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Tips for including more exercise in your work day..

Posted on February 1, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Day in and day out, your heart pumps nutrient-rich blood through miles of blood vessels, arteries, veins, and capillaries—and it doesn’t really ask for much in return. However, there are some things you can do to help this vital muscle do its job efficiently.

Many of us have sedentary jobs in offices and work takes up a significant part of our day. February is National Heart Health Awareness Month and the American Heart Association has come up with this advice for increasing your physical activity during the work day.

Why not…

  • Brainstorm project ideas with a coworker while taking a walk.
  • Create an exercise accountability partnership.
  • Walk during business calls when you don’t need to reference important documents.
  • Stand while talking on the telephone.
  • Walk down the hall to speak with someone rather than using the telephone.
  • Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Or get off a few floors early and take the stairs the rest of the way.
  • Walk while waiting for the plane at the airport.
  • Stay at hotels with fitness centers or swimming pools and use them while on business trips.
  • Take along a jump rope or a resistance band in your suitcase when you travel. Jump and do calisthenics in your hotel room.
  • Download some audio fitness coaching.
  • Participate in or start a recreation league at your company.
  • Form a sports team to raise money for charity events.
  • Join a fitness center or YMCA near your job. Work out before or after work to avoid rush-hour traffic, or drop by for a noon workout.
  • Schedule exercise time on your business calendar and treat it as any other important appointment.
  • Get off the bus a few blocks early and walk the rest of the way to work or home.
  • Walk around your building for a break during the work day or during lunch.
  • Some have mastered the art of typing while on a treadmill by securing the laptop to the base. Be creative!

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Genetically modified food – exposed by an 11 year old

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Not only is this an awesome advert for homeschooling, but this young man, at 11 years old has the guts to stand up on stage and expose the genetically modified food industry for what it is.

Is organic food really worth the price?

This child asks whether you would rather pay the farmer, or the hospital?

His goal is to become an organic farmer.

Please watch and share this great TED talk with anyone who will listen!

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Posted in FDA, health, nutrition, organic farming, real food

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